RE Vanella is a lifelong Delaware resident and a University of Delaware alumnus. He lives in the Forty Acres neighborhood in Wilmington with his wife.

Peter Norman is a hero of mine.

He was an Australian Olympic sprinter in the late 1960s. He won a silver medal in the 200-meter sprint at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. The gold and bronze were awarded to Tommie Smith and John Carlos respectively.

Famously, during the medal ceremony, Smith and Carlos raise black-gloved fists evoking the salute of the Black Power Movement.

Norman was complicit in this. He knew a protest would be made and he encouraged it. He sought out the button of the Olympic Project on Human Rights (OPHR) and wore it on the stand in silent solidarity. He even devised that Carlos wear Smith’s left glove when the former had forgotten his pair.

FILE - In this Oct. 16, 1968, file photo, Australian silver medalist Peter Norman, left, stands on the podium as Americans Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos raise their gloved fists in a human rights protest. Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) awarded on Saturday, April 28, 2018, a posthumous Order of Merit to Norman. AOC President John Coates said that Norman's achievements as an athlete - his silver-medal winning time of 20.06 seconds at Mexico City remains an Australian record 50 years after he set the mark - were dwarfed by his support for the gold and bronze medalists who raised their gloved fists and bowed their heads during the American national anthem. (AP Photo, File)

The Associated Press

Unfortunately, Norman was ostracized for his involvement. He was persona non grata in his home country — so much so, that although he maintained his world-class performance and fitness, he was not selected to represent the Aussies at the 1972 Games in Munich.

Inexplicably, the struggle for basic human rights continues. And world-renowned athletes of the National Football League continue a long tradition of protest in that struggle.

The players who make brief, silent demonstration during the National Anthem are risking harsh rebuke. Colin Kaepernick, as Norman before him, has been blacklisted and lost his career.

I write today in solidarity with the players and with everyone protesting injustice everywhere. I also write in an attempt to clear up a few misconceptions and provide a slightly different perspective.

Some will no doubt still disagree, but at least they begin to consider a broader set of circumstances.

First, as was the case in Mexico City in ’68, the protest is completely passive. It takes place without word or sound at all. And it takes place during the Star-spangled Banner.

Please note the preposition "during." The action is not a protest of the song or about the troops. That’s additional context the observer places on the act.

I recommend exploring why an observer might do something like that.

Second, there remains in fact a chronic racial and class problem in the country. It’s real and it’s severe. It’s also very dangerous. Some just don’t experience it. Some have never even consciously observed its consequences.

Unfortunately, some choose to ignore it. What purpose does this serve?

I could make citation after citation and it would just waste this precious space. Suffice to say there is a variety of both good scholarship and more accessible work on subjects such as redlining and racial mortgage restrictions, the war on drugs, predatory lending and the demonizing of even the most parsimonious subsistence and support programs.

This is happening now. This isn’t history. It’s current affairs.

Some Indianapolis Colts chose to kneel during the national anthem before a game at Lucas Oil ...more

Some Indianapolis Colts chose to kneel during the national anthem before a game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Sept. 24, 2017.

Matt Kryger/IndyStar

Finally and most acutely, though, is the policing problem. The facts are in. The so-called progressive policies of the last 25,years like "broken windows" police tactics, have been systematically oppressive on black and brown people and almost exclusively on the poor.

Matt Taibbi’s 2014 book “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap” for example plainly displays how poor, mostly black and Latino neighborhoods in New York City were the policed with harsh tactics like stop and frisk while in affluent areas crime, both white collar and petty, are largely ignored.

Police violence splashes the internet in video after video after video. Children body slammed. Unarmed, compliant people electrocuted, handcuffed citizens punched and kicked, unarmed neighbors choked and murdered in the street.

How long should we turn the other way from it?

That’s why the protest needs to be at a time and a place whereby it’s provocative. The viewer is made to feel awkward and uncomfortable. This is precisely the point.

Rather than ignore — or worse, apologize for — the latest beating, tazing, pepper spraying, tear gassing or murder of a black or brown person, we’re forced to reckon with it. All the angry letters and threats to boycott and “presidential” tweets can never make that go away.

We're all sitting with it now.

The police violence is personal to these players. And to believe these millionaires are immune from this treatment at the hands of the police is gravely mistaken.

I recommend reviewing the cases of the Milwaukee Buck Sterling Brown and former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Desmond Morrow. When the police roll up, they don’t ask for the balance in someone’s money market account.

There are quite a few rotten bits in our collective history. This does not mean we’re rotten.

Root canals and extractions are extreme, painful and usually wholly unnecessary if rational corrections are implemented.

When it comes to how people of color are treated, America has moral tooth decay. These protesting NFL players are making sure we recognize and acknowledge it, so this historical injustice may be addressed.